Dear Graduate Assistants,
If you’ve been following our 2022 Contract Bargaining Blog or attended our recent Contract Meeting, you know that the current contract negotiations financial proposal from University of Rhode Island is unsatisfactory. The current financial proposal from URI includes a wage increase of only 3.5%, meaning that our wages will only increase approximately $600 for the year. And this year, URI’s graduate school intends on increasing our graduate student fees nearly 9%. At this rate, by the end of our three-year contract, URI's GAs will be making $10,000 less than our closest comparative university.
It’s time to make our voices heard at URI. Our Graduate Assistants at URI are vital to the successful function of the University: we work as professionals and provide essential labor necessary for the continued growth and development of the students, programs, and research in our respective fields. The University of Rhode Island needs to acknowledge the valuable role that graduate assistants play in the function of the university and provide graduate students with a livable wage for their labor.
Here is how you can help! We want to make sure that the administration is listening and hearing what graduate students need. Here are our Contract Actions and how you can help:
Post about being a Graduate Assistant at URI
Showcase the work that you do, especially during the two-week “unpaid vacation” time during winter break.
What are your roles and responsibilities at the University? What labor do you do? What ways do you go above and beyond? Post about regular duties you perform, special training that you have, hazards of your job, roles you perform beyond your job title, why your job matters within the university, etc.
Use the hashtags: #ramsneedraises #urigau #urigaucontract2022 #urigaucontractnegotiations
Make sure to engage with and amplify posts from URI GAU about our contract negotiations. High visibility is KEY in getting the attention of the administration, so the more we share posts and use our hashtags, the better!
Talk to your fellow graduate students! Talk to your supervisors or graduate directors! If you are reading this, then you have the latest info about contract negotiations. We need support from all of our graduate assistants, as well as faculty and staff. They should care about how the graduate assistants are treated, because we are vitally important to the working function of the university. And they should care about our pay rate because lack of competitive funding will make it harder for programs at URI to recruit and retain students!
Write letters to the administration urging them to improve the financial proposals and provide URI GAs with a liveable wage! We want to flood the inboxes, emails, and mailboxes of the administration at URI so that they hear the concerned voices of their graduate students. We need to be making a living wage!
Write an email/letter or call the members of the administration responsible for negotiating with GAU and tell them why GAs deserve a better wage.
Tell them why GAs are essential to the university: What are your roles and responsibilities at the University? What labor do you do? What ways do you go above and beyond? What are regular duties you perform, special training that you have, hazards of your job, roles you perform beyond your job title, why your job matters within the university, etc.
Tell them about the financial struggles of graduate students: affording rent in an area with a cost of living/housing crisis, struggling to pay graduate student fees, having to use Rhody Outpost food pantry to get by, etc.
Include our GAU solidarity graphic in the signature line of your email!
Graduate Assistants are critical to the continued function and success of the university. Our labor is essential for the university, and we deserve to make a reasonable wage for the labor that we do. URI works because WE DO.
We’ve provided some templates to get your started (download links below!), but feel free to branch out!
As always, you can email your questions or concerns to uri.gau@gmail.com.
Let’s show the administration the work that they don’t always see or acknowledge and tell them that we demand a reasonable, living wage!
Solidarity forever,
Graduate Assistant United